Distance learning

What is the distance learning program Theology of the People of God?

The Chair of the Theology of the People of God at the Pontifical Lateran University offers a new two-year distance learning program in English. Alternatively, participants can also choose to study in German.

Fifty students from Germany, Austria, Spain, Switzerland and Tansania are presently participating in the two courses that began in October 2016 and in 2017. A new course in English will begin in October 2018 for participants from all over the world.

This course addresses people who wish to understand better the biblical faith in the light of the critical issues of our times after the age of Enlightenment.

Considering the theological disciplines, this study program links biblical-theological-exegetical to systematic-dogmatic knowledge and, furthermore, includes aspects of Church history. This interdisciplinary approach opens up new prospects for pastoral care and new evangelization. Understanding the biblical-theological foundations of Catholic faith allows for a deepened commitment to the Church.

“The advanced distance learning program of the ‘Chair for the Theology of the People of God‘, established at the Pontifical Lateran University, truly contains a small ‘Summa of theology‘ in ecumenical openness. Under the guideline ‘People of God‘ this theology unites the various theological disciplines to a whole – coming from the root Israel. Questions about Faith and Church posed by the modern human being in the post-Enlightenment era are taken up consistently. This advanced distance learning program is also interesting for non-theologians as its highly academic contents are presented in a comprehensible manner. Studying a field of theology online – combined with short study periods in Rome – is new and attractive for people following their careers.“

Kurt Cardinal Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for promoting Christian Unity and of the Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism

What are the contents of the distance learning?

The distance learning’s guiding principles are the unity of the Old and New Testament, the differentiation from religious pluralism, the profiling of the Judeo-Christian and the synthesis of faith and reason.

The study program consists of 24 lessons, each of them focusing on a central theological topic. The following provides a selection of relevant issues:

Why Christianity isn’t a “religion”

Why Judaism is indispensible to the Church

How faith and history are connected.

Why Church means “sacrament of the world”

How God can act in the world – On understanding miracles

How the dogma of Trinity updates the belief in the one God

What is special about the ethics of the people of God?

What does ecumenism mean in the people of God?

What the theology of the People of God can say about the matter of theodicy

After completing the study program, the student earns a certificate in “Theology of the People of God.”